Ame Henderson

Ame Henderson is a dancemaker with a penchant for the essential and the specific. This interest permeates her work and is applied in technique and aesthetic. Her work seeks not to simulate life, but to examine real moments up close, extract their most potent revelations, and distill these into performance that is natural and without affectation.

Everything starts with the framework, and an interdisciplinary group of collaborators who work within it, as themselves, on an equal level. In this framework, expression is sincere, movement is candid, and the body, available to be moved. The content of the work arises from spontaneous situations, and configurations within the group process. The work is made by layering the experience of one day after another, always looking back, adjusting, playing with and pulling apart, until it is time to meet the audience.

Ame Henderson is a choreographer and performer originally from Vancouver Island and currently living in Toronto. She was a co-founder of les productions f.effect, a Montreal-based performance group dedicated to cross-discipline collaborations. With f.effect she co-created the performances A Chemistry Experiment (1999) and A.C.E (2000), and the the living room dances (1999/2000). Ame was also an instigator in the creation of Solid State, an all-girl alliance of street dancers. In 2001, Ame was a guest at The School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her Amsterdam-based performance project, Blue* *Disco was presented in Amsterdam and in Croatia. Upon her return to Canada, Ame founded Public Recordings, a structure to support the creation and production of her work. Ame presented the solos memories and statements (2004) in Ottawa and Montreal, Manual for Incidence (2005) was presented in Toronto and co-presented by Studio 303 in Montreal and The Instruction Project (2006) was presented at Pixel Projects in Montreal. Her most recent project /Dance/Songs/ (2006) was developed at Le Groupe Dance Lab and premiered in Toronto as part of the DanceWorks Co-Works Series. As a performer, Ame recently appeared in the work of Tino Sehgal at The Art Gallery of Ontario, and collaborates regularly with Jacob Zimmer and his company Small Wooden Shoe. She was an invited participant in the panel discussion "Fragile Positions: Performance in the 21st Century" in Halifax (2004) and Clash (2006-2007), a choreographic research project initiated by Lynda Gaudreau / Companie de Brune. Ame is a co-director of Hub 14, a performance and research space in Toronto.